


Recovery

by Gizzix



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: Depression, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Gen, Suicide Attempt, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-01
Updated: 2014-12-01
Packaged: 2018-02-27 16:27:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2699570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gizzix/pseuds/Gizzix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt from Anon- 'Can you write a suicidal! Hiro and alive!Tadashi fic?'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recovery

**Author's Note:**

> Oooh nelly. You do not know what you have unleashed. Personally, I don’t think canon!Hiro would ever become suicidal, and it definitely isn’t my usual cup of tea, but I will do my best!

_It’s written in between the lines- it’s the words they never say._

Ten minutes.

After the fire- after the screaming and panicking, after all the tears. For ten minutes, Hiro had been sure he had lost his brother. Ten agonizing, world-shaking minutes. 

Two of these minutes had been spent shouting himself hoarse- yelling into the flames and pleading for his brother to return to him. 

Thirty seconds spent in an insane rescue attempt- bolting up the steps to follow the path of his brother, only to be halted by the heat of the inferno, the scorching winds whipped up by the blaze, and the bruising, white knuckled grip that Gogo managed to get on him- everyone had turned at the sound of the explosion, but it was the speedy, athletic girl who got to him first. 

Three minutes, seven seconds spent in a frantic, feral attempt to escape Gogo, and then Wasabi’s grasp as the building began to collapse in on itself. Gogo hadn’t been able to hold him back on her own- she’d managed to drag her best friend’s little brother away from the flames, but her own terror had made her weak, and she’d all but shoved the boy into the larger man’s grasp, and he clung to the panicking boy like a lifeline- like holding Hiro back would make everything alright.

One minute, twenty three seconds spent to recover from the shouting, to recover his voice and tremble in Wasabi’s arms as the firemen rushed past them all and into the blaze, to recover anything that might be saved. To watch as only a handful of them entered, and were called back just as quickly.

One minute. Exactly sixty seconds of an almost dissociative state where Hiro was sure he was hallucinating all of this, but then the last firefighter emerges, struggling with a larger body in their arms and calling for backup and paramedics and Hiro is lost to the hysterics again, breaking free from the grip of a shell-shocked Wasabi and ignoring the shouts of alarm from his aunt, Gogo, and the rest. 

Two minutes, after the mad dash to his brother’s side, are spent clinging to the lifeless form and shouting, crying and begging ‘don’t go, don’t leave me, I need you don’t go’- until Aunt Cass’ arms wind around him and pull him in tight, letting the paramedics get to his brother’s silent body and begin treatment to save anything they can.

It’s only ten minutes, but Hiro isn’t sure he can ever recover.

—

It’s been two months, but Hiro can’t remember a single minute of them. 

Tadashi had spent five weeks in the hospital. There was only so much that could be done for his smoke damaged lungs, but skin grafts to his right arm and other burn treatments had been necessary. They never recovered the body of Professor Callaghan. 

His brother’s survival had been a ‘miracle’ apparently. Hiro is sure that whoever had written that particular phrase in an article hadn’t seen his brother’s state. 

All of his hair has been burned away, and only one of his bright, intelligent, and laughing eyes is left to watch Hiro as the younger boy tiptoes around their room.

He still can’t grasp what’s happened. The fire feels like a nightmare, and everything that’s followed feels like a dream. Which means the only thing that feels real anymore, is the rough drag of a razor over the tender skin of his forearm.

He’d never meant to let it get this far, but the guilt, the _guilt_. If he had held on just a moment longer, just _three_ seconds. Tadashi would still be whole. Tadashi wouldn’t be facing months of recovery, and a full semester of school missed, and condolences from the doctors and the ‘we did everything we could’s and the minutes spent in front of the mirror every morning that Hiro can’t help but bear witness to, as his brother comes to terms with what he looks like now- the scars and burns that disfigure him. The newspapers can call him a hero, and Tadashi can face each day with optimism but Hiro sees the truth- he sees the despair in his brother’s expression when others react to his new features.

It’s twelve am at night, and Hiro presses that much harder into his skin with the bare blade he’d removed from an X-Acto knife earlier in the day. 

He should have held tighter.

A new line of red appears, and the clock reads twelve o’two am. 

He never should have let his brother run towards the inferno in the first place.

It’s twelve o’two and thirty seconds, and Tadashi stirs from his bed.

Twelve o’five and thirty seven seconds, and Hiro can hear Tadashi banging on the bathroom door, demanding his little brother open up, because he can hear the sobbing and it frightens him, and Hiro cries all the harder.

Twelve o’seven, and Tadashi has broken the door, bent the hinges, shattered the lock and doesn’t care a bit, because there’s blood- Hiro’s blood, and his own pain medication makes him foggy- makes it difficult to know what to do.

Twelve o’eight, and Aunt Cass has been roused out of bed from Tadashi’s frantic shouts as he presses a decorative towel to Hiro’s forearm, holding the boy together, both literally and figuratively, until their aunt can call for an ambulance.

It’s twelve ten am, and Hiro is being lifted onto a stretcher as Tadashi answers questions out of his line of sight, and he can faintly hear the wobbly, tear stained voice of Aunt Cass as he’s taken down the stairs, and into the back of an ambulance that’s backlit by the night. 

It’s twelve ten am, in the middle of the night, and Tadashi is alive and well.

But Hiro doesn’t know if he can ever recover.


End file.
